16 February 2020
Well done to Ascot and Haydock for managing to race yesterday. I am sure it was very 'touch and go' all day on safety grounds, but they did it and it provided the public with some extremely good, attritional and ''heart in you mouth' racing. We certainly would not have been able to race here - it was more like tying everything down weather and you struggled to stand on your two feet.
I keep moaning, but Riders on the Storm could be a new superstar. The only reason for the moan being that I desperately tried to buy the horse before it went through the sales last Spring and then I was underbidder for him at the sales. The two owners I tried buying him for certainly remember him now and wish we had got him!! But, well done to his current owners Carl Hinchy and Mark Scott - they are two big supporters of the game and deserve a really decent horse..... Thankfully the race was not marred by Cyrname's fall.He looked very weary when he eventually got up from the fall and clearly something was amiss for him to be back in a well beaten fourth when he came down. I am sure PFN will put him away for the season now and he will come back in the Autumn like the real Cyrname the public clearly love....
Up at Haydock I was delighted for Warren's Emitom return to winning ways but gutted for Paul O'Brien on Lord de Mesnil just getting mugged in the Grand National trial. The horse jumped and travelled beautifully the whole way round for Paul, but the slow jump at the last made him tire and he got beaten in the last fifty yards. His oiwners are also great fun local publicans so it would have been a hell of a party if he had held on....!
Back here, Loose Chips' owners were in yesterday to discuss our future plans for him and eventual retirement. He is now fourteen and I am sure we are into the last season of him in training. He still shows us all his old enthusiasm, but the last thing we want to do is race him for too long. His stats are unbelievable. His first run for us was back in the Autumn of 2011 (this is his ninth consecutive season), he has worn blinkers since 2012 and he has won 11 of his 61 races and been placed on over half his runs amassing almost £200,000 in prize money - he has been an amazingly hardy horse and great fun to train. His last few runs could be aimed at the new veteran final at Newbury in March, with a run at Hereford on the way. Then big decisions will have to be made...... plans are already being made for the next 'Chipper'....!!
